Push it now, so nobody has a chance to talk you out of it.
Do it in secret, so you don't have to hear the whiners and the peaceniks. Blow
it all up, and answer the pesky questions later.

That's what politics has come to in Alabama. Gone are the
days of debate and dialogue. What we have here is scorched-earth diplomacy. We make
public policy by chaos theory.

Blow it all to smithereens – as a few highly-placed legislative
tacticians did last week in the name of school improvement – and trust in God and House Speaker Mike
Hubbard that what springs up in its place will be better than before.

For practical purposes it means little that foes of the act –
which would give tax credits and refunds to parents of children in failing
schools if they move their children to private schools – found a sympathetic ear
in Judge Price.

Because if past is prologue, the authors of the act have an
equally sympathetic Supreme Court. Nine GOP
high court robes trump a Democratic county judge any day. Just wait and see.

So the question, ultimately, is not about the school bill at
all. In the fog of this war, far more important questions have become clear:

Have the people of
Alabama lost control of their government?

Does a body that willfully
breaks the rules to get its way deserve to have more power?

The governor himself acknowledged that passage of this
controversial education bill was carried out in Seal Team Six fashion because
otherwise: "I don't think it would have passed."

And the legislative architects of the coup came right out to
say the ends justified their means, which is just another way of saying we know best. And they did it while
admitting that nobody really knows what or where those ends are.

They did it because
they could. And we the people are left to trust that this Legislature knows what's good for us?

This is the same body that "reformed" the state's open meetings law to
the point that – in the words of an Ethics Commission official – "you can drive
a truck through it."

This is the gang that claimed it made "sweeping" ethics
reform when it barred folks like teachers
from accepting cheap Christmas presents from students, but wrote in loopholes
that let themselves accept $150 a year from lobbyists and even more than that from
companies that hire those lobbyists.

Just because you call it reform doesn't make it so.

And this is the Legislature that now wants to seize even more
power for itself, in the name of efficiency.

So leadership in this Legislature, which has shown no
interest in open discussion or debate, which has demonstrated little respect
for the rights of citizens to know and govern, which has used power to willfully
trample its own rules, is now using its power to ... obtain more power.

Trust them, they say? It ought to make your head go ...

Boom.

John Archibald's
column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the Birmingham News, and on
al.com. Email him at jarchibald@al.com